An Overthinking Everything Blog

On Steve Jobs

If we are being honest here, I would have to say that I did well to develop with technology beyond the DVD player. I started dating my husband about 11 years ago, so that would be about right time wise. See, my husband is one of those IT guys – my go-to, fix-it man for all things high-tech.

He eventually comes back and says, “It’s fixed,” and it is. Wah lah! No hassles. Who needs Geek Squad when you have Geek Spouse? It’s a nice amenity in life if I do say so myself.

The recent passing of Steve Jobs really hit a tender spot within me that I didn’t even know was there. I knew he was the super-power behind anything, and everything ‘i’. You can’t even look at a knock-off ‘i’ t-shirt – iGod, iRun, iSmell…you get the picture – without thinking of Apple. Steve Jobs was Apple.

He did what every one of us, at some point or another, wants to do. We all want to become something GREAT and BIG in this world. We all, deep-down, want to do our own part to change the course of man somehow. Whether we bring new, amazing technology into the world, or blow up buildings, it’s all in an attempt to leave our mark in this world – to become a legacy. Steve Jobs did nothing short of this. He is an icon of our time – not an easy thing to achieve.

For me, it wasn’t necessarily Steve Jobs’ brilliance behind advances in technology that set him apart from the rest. It was his outlook on life. It was his drive and his motivation – the ‘umph’ behind his success. He wasn’t scared of taking risks. That ‘intuition’ he said to follow, he did! And, he did remarkable things with it.

It also got me thinking about something else. Although we all want to do our part to alter the universe somehow – hopefully for the greater good – it is impossible for everyone to do it on such noticeably large-scale. For some, our iPhone isn’t a handheld device, but perhaps the spark in a child with the ability to learn to read, a baby nursing our breast, or a defective heart being hand-pumped by a surgeon as crucial moments tick by in someone’s life.

I love this quote that I saw posted numerous times on Facebook today:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

Perfectly said.

All I know, is that we have to be all that we can with the time we are given. We have to look at where we are in life as a place where we have been strategically placed in order to move us forward, and to create our own mark in the world. It’s scary though, really! Intuition is a hard thing to follow. Realistically, when we try to use it, we can often be looked down upon and sometimes heavily scrutinized by others, especially when it is something ‘new’ and ‘different than the norm’. It is easy to let the voices of others drown out our own perceptions to the point where we really do become trapped behind them. It’s easy to conform to a mold of acceptability, and then to struggle on a daily basis to find comfort there. People are constantly giving us direction instead of just offering insight and a word or two of motivation. Then when you do step off onto an unbeaten path, they watch closely for you to fall. At times like this, perhaps we just have to look outside of ourselves, and look at amazing lives that have graced this world, such as the life and words of someone like Steve Jobs. His insight into what it takes to use your dreams and intuition to propel you forward and live in your own light instead of someone elses, is a brilliant inspiration to us all.

Whether the CEO of a mega-corporation, a teacher, a doctor, a parent, a sister, a priest, or a friend, we must take the gifts and opportunities we are given and use them wisely. We must trust ourselves. We must never cease to dream. For me, I know my mark will not be made in this world by creating a device that will change the way we communicate. As a matter of fact, I really have absolutely no idea what my mark will be. All I know is that I have to keep moving forward, I have to keep writing, and running. I have to keep advocating for my children. I have to keep loving the hell out of my family. I have to just be myself – to live from the gut of my intuition – and let it eventually take me somewhere. That somewhere will most certainly not be announced boldly across the globe at my passing, but my greatest hope is that it will have at least been an exceptional life to the ones I love.

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5 Responses

I also have a geek spouse. My geek spouse detests all things i – he says Apple locks things down in a ridiculous way. But even he can’t deny what an incredible innovator Steve Jobs was. I was surprised by how sad I was to hear of his passing.

I wasn’t going to reply to this post, but since I’m here I will. That is all well and good, but he was also a deadbeat dad. And while he was wealthy, his babymama was on welfare, because Steve Jobs was pretty innovative about that too. But what I really wanted to comment on was your final Stapler post. I, too, sent my kid back to school this year. My reasons were similar to yours–we moved to Indiana, where the schools are much better at differentiating, and I was never that good at homeschooling, and my little one was hanging off the chandeliers too, and I was about to be fired from my job, and so on and so forth. I just wanted to say bravo to us both for doing it if even for a short while. I see how much my daughter benefited from it. And kudos to you for being brave enough to have your blog, no matter how long it lasted.

I didn’t know that about Steve Jobs, but I kind of wondered about that. The level of success had to have had a sacrifice somewhere, I don’t believe that family should ever fall into the pool for what someone would even think of sacrificing, but, sadly, people do.

Kudos to you, too, for homeschooling. Man, it was HARD, but very much in the trying-to-keep-the-kids-alive kind of way. 🙂 I’m glad you have found your way to a good school district, and I hope all is well in your career. Blessings to you, and thanks for reading.

Very well said, and his passing also hit a tender spot for me as well, I can’t help but to think of my sons and their hard work, success and the ambition, drive and ability to conquer the very sentiment Jobs spoke of! Hats off to you! Live strong!